Overdue Reckoning with the Public Library

by Oliver, Amanda

• ISBN13: 9781641609210
• ISBN10: 1641609214
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-06-04
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• More Book Details

Summary

"One part love letter, one part eulogy, Overdue tells the story of America’s public library system . . . Amanda Oliver proves herself a vibrant new literary voice . . . This is a book for all book lovers.” —Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Who are libraries for, how have they evolved, and why do they fill so many roles in our society today?

Based on firsthand experiences from six years of professional work as a librarian in high-poverty neighborhoods of Washington, DC, as well as interviews and research, Overdue begins with Oliver's first day at an "unusual" branch: Northwest One.

Using her experience at this branch allows Oliver to highlight the national problems that have existed in libraries since they were founded: racism, segregation, and class inequalities. These age-old problems have evolved into police violence, the opioid epidemic, rampant houselessness, and lack of mental health care nationwide—all of which come to a head in public library spaces.
 
Can public librarians continue to play the many roles they are tasked with? Can American society sustain one of its most noble institutions?

Pushing against hundreds of years of stereotypes, romanticization, and discomfort with a call to reckoning, Overdue will change the way you think about libraries forever.

Author Biography

Amanda Oliver is a writer and former librarian. Her writing has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Electric Literature, Medium, and The Rumpus. She has been interviewed about libraries and being a librarian for NPR, CBC Radio, Associated Press, and American Libraries Magazine. Oliver is a graduate of the MLS program at SUNY Buffalo and the MFA program at UC Riverside. A Buffalo, New York, native, she now lives and writes in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree.

Table of Contents

Contents
    Dedication
    Author’s Note/Foreword ?
    Epigraph
Part I: Becoming 
1 The Incident
2 Omnium Lux Civium
3 Becoming A Librarian
4 So, what do you do?
Part II: Empathy
5 The Library From ‘L’
6 Can You Help Me?
7 For Whom
8 Burning Out
Part III: Reckoning
9 An Education
10 Libraries Will (Not) Save Us
11 Multiphrenia
12 The Nearest Wound: The Future of the American Public Library 
Acknowledgements
Index